Sunday brief(ish): Self-seriousness in gothic sci-fi, and Tamsyn Muir's attempts to cure it

 I'm going to keep this brief today.  I think.  I tend to title mid-week posts, "Quick take," and then ramble for longer than I intend, so whether or not this will be as brief as I currently believe, as I start to type is an open question, although you will be able to tell as you look at the overall length of the post.  I just don't know now, as I type.  Fun with time.

And that is part of why my posts are often longer than I intend.

Anywho, last year, one of the buzziest of science fiction/fantasy novels was Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir.  It was absolutely ludicrous, and over-the-top.  Necromancers in space, with the all-important woke angle.  But the thing is, it was hilarious.  It was good.  Rather than wallowing in the irritating, self-important tropes of goth convention, Muir wrote them, and had characters indulge in them, and then had the title character, Gideon Nav, undercut the whole thing with Joss Whedon-esque snark, thereby deflating every bit of self-seriousness in the whole endeavor.  Just as Cabin In The Woods was Whedon's "loving hate letter, or hateful love letter to horror moves," Gideon the Ninth did the same for goth.  And oh, how goth nonsense needed it.  I mean, yeah, Sandman has value, because Neil Gaiman, blah, blah, blah, (but Death was so much cooler than Dream) but someone needed to take Gideon's two-handed sword to all of the self-seriousness of the genre.  So Tamsyn Muir did.  In my praise of the book, I have described it like Jane's Addiction, crashing the opera.  I... don't like opera.

Basically, it worked because Gideon, herself, undercut all of the self-seriousness of goth nonsense.  Goth tropes are silly.  If you aren't making fun of it, why bother?

So we come to the inevitable sequel, because no sci-fi/fantasy author can ever write a stand-alone book.  It's like, the law, or something.  Harrow the Ninth.  OK, so spoiler alert, for both books.

At the end of Gideon, Muir kills off Gideon, and Harrow becomes a "Lyctor," which is basically a very powerful necromancer, in service to the Emperor, who goes around singing "Annabel Lee," by Edgar Allan Poe, the original goth whiner.

And for most of Harrow, Gideon isn't even mentioned.  Why?  Harrowhark basically does necromantic brain surgery on herself to block even any memory of Gideon.  I'll stop there to minimize spoilers, 'cuz I already spoiled the end of the first, and lots of stuff in the second, but I don't need to spoil any more to make my point.

What made Gideon the Ninth work was undercutting the self-seriousness of gothic sci-fi/fantasy through snark.  Muir can write snappy dialog and witty banter, but the vessel for deflating the bullshit of everything around her was Gideon.  What happens when you take away the character who does that?  Well, you can try to have another character fill that role.  Suddenly, Ianthe Tridentarius because the snarky banter foil for Harrowhark Nonagesimus.  But, that means she reads very differently from the first book, and OK, she was scheming in the first book, and we get a truer reading of her because she has achieved her goal of Lyctorhood, or whatever, but that's not really it.  Instead, Muir needed a witty banter foil, but Ianthe isn't deflating self-importance because she is self-important.  Doesn't work the same way.

All of this is to say that Harrow the Ninth just isn't as much fun.  In my comments on the last Hugo Awards, among the nominees, Gideon was my pick.  Harrow?  Well...  Compared to a lot of my novel-grumbling, this probably does come across as relatively minor.  I'm not telling you that the world is incoherent, the plot is illogical, the social science is not, nor anything of the kind.  Instead, it's like someone forgot to put Navarro's guitar into the mix.  What's Jane's Addiction without Dave Navarro?  OK, a band name that I'm not typing, fronted by Perry, which was pretty good anyway, but that's not the point.  The point is, if Jane's Addiction tried to go on-stage, and the guy at the mixing-board just forgot to put Dave's guitar in the mix, the concert would suck.

This is not quite that, but there is something missing.  The critical piece that elevated Gideon the Ninth from a well-written book to a gloriously weird and fun book that rose above any reasonable expectations you may have had given any attempt to describe its premise.

This was the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer effect.  You may not even remember that there was a movie before the tv show, but there was.  I have no idea how the movie got made, nor how a tv show got made given the movie, but there was a movie starring Donald Sutherland, Luke Perry, Pee Wee Herman, and various others.  For real.  I remember it.  I saw it, and... um... yeah.  There was that.  Then, way back in 1997, I was working, I got home, bored and tired, and turned on a tv.  What came on was... what the fuck is this?!  Is this a tv adaptation of that shitty, fucking movie?  Oh, dear Flying Fucking Spaghetti Monster.  I... watched, like I was watching an ensuing car crash, waiting for the disaster which... did not happen.  I was more horrified that I found myself laughing at the witty banter and strange goodness of the show.

Yet if you try to describe the show:  high school cheerleader is "the chosen one"* to kill vampires... seriously?  We're, like, watching a tv show about this?  Except that if you are aware of sci-fi/fantasy, you probably know that the show was genius.  Not just goofy, snarky fun, but actual genius.  Like, it had no right to be that good, given the premise.  Describe Breaking Bad, and OK.  I can see how such a show could be brilliant.  Describe Buffy to the uninitiated, and you gotta be fuckin' kidding me.

Gideon the Ninth didn't reach that height, but it was better than it had any right to be, given the premise, and for similar reasons.  Undercutting the self-seriousness of the genre through snark and witty banter.  Add cool world-building, and you're onto something.

What happens, though, when you remove, not only the character who undercut everyone's self-seriousness, but the memory of her through necromantic brain surgery?  Everyone is too self-serious and self-important.

Especially the POV character, Harrowhark Nonagesimus.  She was a foil for Gideon throughout most of the first book, initially as an adversary, and inevitably shown to be less evil, 'cuz.  Make her your POV character?  She's the overly self-serious one who wallows in goth tropes!  That's not to say there is nothing interesting about her, and there are cool narrative tricks.  There is stuff goin' on here, that I won't bother to spoil, but...

Take the witty banter out of Buffy, and it's a risk.  There was, of course, a silent episode of Buffy.  "Hush."  After being accused of relying too heavily on witty banter, Whedon wrote an episode in which some demons took away everyone's voices.  It was creepy as hell, and also hilarious.  Generally considered one of the best episodes, and I'll go along with that.

Harrow the Ninth?  Um... Havin' some problems here.  Look, this isn't a bad book.  It's just that there's something missing, leaving the book too self-serious, which means that the magic just ain't there.

Muir is one of the new authors everyone is supposed to worship for, well, a variety of reasons.  The buzz for the first book was pretty much justified.  At this point, it is self-sustaining, and damn, she can write, but Harrow is not up to the standards of Gideon.  Sorry, but I don't think this one will be my pick for novel of the year.

*Worst cliche ever.